Bitcoin is a decentralised computer currency designed by self-righteous Ayn Rand-reading nerds who despise looters and parasites like, er, you. It is used to purchase Internet services, illegal drugs and pictures of naked women holding video cards.
Bitcoin works by an emergent synergy of cryptography, peer-to-peer, anonymity, anarchism, libertarianism, wasting stupendous quantities of electricity, the marketing department at NVidia, the enduring exchange value of tulip bulbs and doing all of this instead of Folding@Home.
Bitcoin successfully harnesses a hitherto-unexploited Internet resource: the vast reserves of unexamined privilege amongst computer programmers. Coins are "mined" by stealing them from people who are able to comprehend this level of computer science but still keep their Bitcoin wallet in plain text on a Windows machine.
The Bitcoin system is robustly designed to continue past the collapse of the US dollar and the world economy, as the Internet, fast computers and reliable electricity are all expected to be readily available when barbarian hordes are wandering the burnt-out post-apocalyptic remnants of civilisation.
It is completely incorrect to describe Bitcoin as a "pyramid scheme." Technically, it's a "pump-and-dump."
Many common products are still inexplicably not purchasable with Bitcoins. "It's as if they don't understand the revolutionary wonder of Bitcoin," says Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "I can't get chicks with Bitcoins either. Even with my slickest Pick-Up Artist techniques! It's as if my knowledge of economics and game theory didn't apply to real life. But that's impossible, of course. They're probably just theists. Hold on, I just gotta post to Slashdot about this."
Bitcoin was invented by Internet libertarians, in the spirit of freely-chosen individual interpersonal interactions that will bring about the utter collapse of the oppressive taint of the dead hand of government, in order to make money at your expense.
Windows Bing Voice was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. "Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality," said Steve Ballmer. "Heck, even they didn't know it was Skype until today. That's how, uh, stealth we are."
The new Windows Bing Voice client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We'll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice 2011 Ultimate Edition by 2013, for sure."
Service is expected to remain "at 100%" as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows updates and Windows Genuine Advantage serial number blacklists.
Google said that the Google Voice servers were "holding up well" under the influx of new users.
XFree86 died when the community got up and left. Even with free hosting, the remaining XFree86 partisans couldn't keep it alive and lost interest.
Before that, the X Consortium - backed by the might of industry - died when no-one could be found to participate in it... because XFree86 was where the action (i.e., community) was.
Citizendium forked from Wikipedia, recruited a pile of academics, then Larry Sanger drove them away. (And then the cranks moved in.) When someone said "chaps, CZ is dead" and tried another fork, they called him... a "traitor". This from the project that was a fork itself.
XOrg is under the MIT X11 licence, but seems to get plenty of contributions back - because it's where the community is. An open source licence with centripetal force from the gravitational pull of the community.
Wayland's lead developers and all the people pushing for it in Fedora are X.Org developers. They're not "traitors" to X, they're people with their eye on the target: a good open source desktop.
EGCS won by the community getting up and leaving GCC.
LibreOffice won when the community got up and left Oracle. Oracle and IBM's approach in trying to claw it back is gibberingly, hilariously misconceived. (And Rob Weir blew his cred irretrievably lying about what the FSF had said and directing abuse at the FSF rep who tried to correct his lie. Once a shill equals a shill.)
OOo=XFree86 with a sponsor. Yay sponsors. Can IBM employ enough contributors to single-handedly make up for the enthusiasm to be found at LibreOffice? I really doubt it.
LibreOffice is already ridiculously better than OOo on Windows and (IMO) feels nicer on Linux. Not as smooth a user experience as MS Office, but it's clear there's now someone involved who actually gives a hoot about Windows users' experience. (And I'm amazed that, from the observable evidence, OOo clearly didn't.)
RIM makes BlackBerry that can’t read email
on
RIM Struggles Continue
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Research in Motion have broken new barriers with the PlayBook tablet, a BlackBerry that can’t read email. And needs to be tethered to a phone.
“We feel a technology preview is just the thing we need to fight iPhone and Android in the consumer market,” said founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “The missing core functionality should be seen as areas of spectacular potential. Also, the board has ascertained that you should stay away from the brown acid, it’s not so good.”
The PlayBook has launched remarkably, with thousands of the devices being recalled for crippling operating system bugs straight after release.
In a double-tap Osborne through the head, the PlayBook uses the new QNX BlackBerry OS, which does not run current BlackBerry apps, will not be available on phones for another year and will not work on any current BlackBerry device. This is separate from OS 7, to be released soon, which will also not work on any existing BlackBerry. RIM’s present mobile carrier partners were “overwhelmed” to be stuck with so much already-obsolete stock.
RIM led the world into the smartphone era, several years before Apple’s iPhone turned everyone into the sort of twat you only ever used to see carrying a BlackBerry.
Technology industry rumours suggest a Microsoft takeover of RIM, considered an excellent match in competence and vision. “Synergy’s just another word for two and two makes one!” said Steve Ballmer. “We will assimilate your technological stench of death into our own.”
Already done. Books LLC and Alphascript do these print-on-demand "books" taken from Wikipedia, charging $50 a copy. Reusing WIkipedia content is fine - that's what it's there for, make a zillion bucks, knock yourself out - but they need to make it a little clearer where this stuff comes from.
THE OSBOURNES, Bog Society, Sunday (NTN) — A survey by fraud investigators has revealed the top ten worst excuses used by the evil benefit cheats depriving you, yes you, of valuable pennies you could have put toward your next pint.
* "We didn't realise the NHS needed that six billion quid, we just had to make a few million phone calls."
* "Don't tell me you give a shit about the tax your supermarket pays if you get your milk 2p cheaper."
* "It was a necessary and unavoidable cost of doing business to route every penny through Switzerland."
* "Kate Moss on my arm or you getting to study. I mean, let's get serious here."
"Benefit fraud is no joke," said welfare reform minister Lord Fraud, "and yet our investigators are routinely dealing with barefaced cheek and ridiculous excuses for stealing money from the taxpayer.
"Fortunately, they're mates of George's, so we can get on with scapegoating victims we're fairly sure probably can't fight back. You weren't limping on the way in here, were you?"
Neuroscientists have found that religious fervour lights up the same parts of the brain as waiting in line for your devotions at the Apple Store.
The scientists were interviewed by a BBC programme exploring the fantastically lucrative and popular brands springing up around the supernatural. Religions such as “Christianity” parody the story of the semi-mythical Steve Jobs’ virgin birth, adoption by a humble Silicon Valley family, founding of Apple, expulsion from the fold, decade in the wilderness and triumphant Second Coming, in which devotees were led to enlightenment, glory and hipness.
“We suspect religions may be memetic parasites latching onto the areas of the brain evolved to appreciate Apple products,” said one scientist whose name is being withheld for protection from outraged Apple jihadis. “The scans of ‘religion’ appear remarkably similar — the adrenal glands are stimulated and the same areas of the visual regions light up. Somewhat in the shape of an apple. No, really! Apple-shaped brain stigmata! I’ve contacted Cupertino with news of a miracle, and put the scans up on eBay.”
Cupertino’s response was frosty. “To have the sacred enlightenment of the products of our saviour Steve maligned by comparison to mere witchdoctor cultist mumbo-jumbo is no less than a calculated insult. One important difference is that our stuff works. If you hold it right.” The spokesman then compared the neuroscientist’s mother to a PC.
“The comparison is ridiculous,” said “religious” leader Joe “Happy Heil” Ratzinger. “We’re just out to make an honest buck like anyone. Well, fairly honest.”
How about actually being a parent? Sitting down with your child and help them use the Internet safely is far better than trying to either force the usage of filtering applications or ranting about why the content is there to begin with.
+1
This is highly achievable. My daughter is 4, has a computer (an ancient Mac G4 with an ancient Cinema Display with the weird Mac-only plug - discards from a publishing company, depreciated to £0) - she watches BBC CBeebies on it and plays kids' Flash games. She does this in the sitting room, where we know what she's doing.
(And the kids' Flash games usually start with an advertisement - directed at parents. This is monetisable.)
Things like this would exist if there was actually any market whatsoever for them.
The trouble is: those demanding them are not prepared to do the work themselves; instead, they demand that others restrict the services they offer.
Wikipedia got this for years and eventually told the people demanding it to go away and do it themselves if they wanted it. Notice how the people wanting this don't go to the trouble of setting up a filtering service themselves - no, they demand it be filtered at the source. They do this consistently.
I've spent the past five or so years being delighted at how much better Ubuntu has consistently done than XP doing the same jobs (Firefox with a zillion tabs/windows open, and a music player) on the same hardware. This is most disconcerting.
Yeah, I'm seeing this. Running 11.04 with classic interface on a Dell Mini 9. I thought the battery was finally dying of old age - no, it's terrible power consumption.
Is there anything that can be done about this? Old kernel version?
The Internet Watch Foundation’s “Crapland” child-friendly Internet theme park has gone bust after only three days.
An information board at the entrance depicts the classical painting Smell The Glove by Scorpionaggio (courtesy National Portrait Gallery) and welcomes the visitor on a “flight of the imagination, travelling down the magical pathways that teenagers have used to get their porn for centuries,” and which have been specially opened up for the lucky children invited to come. “Just like Michael Jackson’s Neverland.”
Advertisements promised a “Clean Kiddie-Friendly World Hollywood Special FXs, Blind Faith plane ride, Nevermind swimming baths, Houses of the Holy rock climbing & much more!”
The reality when it opened on Saturday evening was somewhat less impressive. Spurious 404s, lying customer service staff (“for the authentic Internet experience!”), HTML 2.0 and web searches through AltaVista. “It looked like a website from 1995 or a paper chart of what it should look like,” said customer Jimmy Wales. “It was like they’d stacked dial-up modems on both sides of a path together, stuck some printouts on a TV and stuck a keyboard in front. We were waiting two hours and they charged us £10 for a photo with Mary Whitehouse.”
Two curtain-twitchers and a Whitehouse were attacked by irate Internet users. A posting on 4chan showed a busybody having a fag behind the grotto.
Then, on Tuesday evening, Crapland closed. A statement by the management said this was due to “intentional organised crowd manipulation and event sabotage and unscrupulous and inaccurate negative bias media that quoted our words accurately in full.” A woman dressed as a particularly hefty Pepperpot stood outside shrieking: “The IWF’s dead. Go home.”
Cable internet users who unwittingly signed up for the Crapland experience are giving up and getting DSL broadband instead. “It’s been a complete Virgin killer.”
Silverlight was Microsoft's second answer to Flash. Their first answer was Liquid Motion, back in the '90s, when Flash was only for silly animations.
Others include its XPS replacement for Adobe PDF and its HD Photo replacement for JPEG photographs. Also, that CD-ROM format Vista defaults to which no other computers can read.
I used to really like Ubuntu Netbook Remix around 9.10. I'm actually amazed Unity on 11.04 sucks as much as it does, and wonder where it all went horribly wrong.
HEY HEY 16K, R: Tape Loading Error, Thursday (NTK) — GCHQ has begun work on a range of uniquely British cyber-weapons to add to Britain's defensive capability.
"Cyber-Space," said General Jonathan Shaw, pronouncing the hyphen between the words, "represents conflict without borders. But we can use the finest of British technical pluck to fight off Johnny Cyberforeigner!"
"We need a toolbox of capabilities," said armed forces minister Nick Harvey."For instance, we have a truckload of old Psion EPOCs, which are excellent for hand-to-hand combat. We can also demoralise the enemy with talk of what a fantastic OS it has and how their Nokia with Symbian just can't compare. Then, of course, we drive a truck over them."
Other research weapons include Sinclair ZX81 ninja stars, BBC Model B boat anchors and more ethically questionable devices such as Amstrad Emailer land mines.
Harvey did not specify where future threats might come from. "It would be foolish to assume the West can always dictate the pace and direction of this cyber-techno-electrickery-logy-stuff. Thing. I understand there are clever people in the world who don't even live in Britain. Imagine that!
The cyber-warfare initiative is anticipated to fully achieve its objectives over the next five years, those being a suitably fattened defence budget and continuing contract bungs to BAE Systems.
I was interested to see that the Engadget story is filled with pretty much the same complaints about this new Windows interface that the Linux world is making about GNOME 3 and Ubuntu Unity - that is, people (e.g.me, I'll note) are annoyed at the prospect of the desktop as they know it being made into a big phone.
US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, has said that attacks on the United States via the Internet could merit a conventional military response.
The Seattle-based insurgent group is thought to have seeded American government and military computers with millions of copies of malware that allows attackers easy access to any data stored on the computer, or indeed to take complete control of the computer and use it for their own ends as part of a massive “botnet” to mount further attacks. The malware, “Windows,” makes securing a computer running it almost impossible.
“Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action,” emphasised Chilton, “and not in any way out of twenty-five years’ bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery.”
Chilton stressed that members of the US military must begin to think of their computers as the front lines. “Do you realize that in addition to adding Windows to computers, why, there are studies underway to Windowsize salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream! I can no longer sit back and allow Windows infiltration, Windows indoctrination, Windows subversion and the international enterprise licensing conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!”
The Obama administration is currently reviewing the United State’s cyberspace defense policy. “We’re considering all options thoroughly,” said the President, closing his MacBook and looking lingeringly at the red button on his desk.
The GFDL is possibly one of the worst licenses ever. The only reason it has not been justifiably buried at the bottom of a swamp with "MISERABLE FAILURE" burnt into its forehead with a soldering iron is because Wikipedia used to use it. Wikipedia used it because Nupedia used it. Nupedia used it only because the CC licenses hadn't been invented yet.
Literally no one understands how to reuse GFDL content safely, including the FSF. I sent a query about how it applies to aggregates; three months later, the FSF cut'n'pasted their "we have no idea either" response, suggesting you read the license text and consult your attorney. Given Wikimedia's attorney at the time was Mike Godwin and it made his head hurt too, this strongly suggests no-one left at the FSF wants to think about this thing. (They finally clarified this particular issue in GFDL 1.3.)
In the context of mirroring a widely-edited wiki or a page thereof, its terms are difficult to follow, legally unclear and may be technically impossible to comply with in a comparable degree of safety to the GPL or CC by-sa. (Every copy must have the full 23 kilobytes of licence text attached, about seven pages of single-spaced 12 point. This is not so good for single articles or photographs, and Internet video is likely impossible to reproduce under the GFDL in legal safety. This is, of course, the easiest term of the GFDL to obey. CC by-sa allows the license to be named by reference.) And don't even ask about images.
Before Wikimedia went Creative Commons, tedious nerds would frequently claim that any given reuser of Wikipedia content was technically violating the GFDL no matter what shrubberies they obtained (thus putting off quite a lot of reusers). The Debian project classes it as a "non-free" license because its terms are unclear and onerous in practice.
Use CC by-sa, CC-by or Public Domain, like everyone else in the whole goddamn free content world does. Don't use GFDL for the same reason you don't use shitty home-rolled software licenses that may be technically free/open but are deliberately incompatible with everything.
DOOM, Spawn Camping, Saturday (The Word) — The Lord God, the Creator of the Universe, offered His commiserations to every soul in His Creation that they had failed to reach the standard of faith required for Rapturing today.
Thousands of dedicated Christians were not uplifted bodily to Heaven, in a wave of Rapture circling the globe at six o'clock in the evening local time.
"The manual is extremely clear on these points," He said through his Voice, Metatron ("I keep telling you, I'm an angel, not a Transformer"). "You mix fibres, you eat shellfish, you defecate closer than a mile from the city, you sit on a chair that your wife has ever sat on when she was on her period. And you have completely ignored the detailed instructions in the first chapter of Leviticus on how the Lord likes his barbecue." It shook Its head in exasperation. "You've had the book right there, for years!"
Atheists, originally revelling in snide and superior schadenfreude, were more than a little chagrined by the actual Voice of God quite unambiguously revealing its existence and telling the world what it had got wrong by direct communication into the soul of every human on Earth. Millions have now signed up for the Church of Reluctantly Admitting, All Right, I Have the Verifiable Proof I was Asking For, Just Don't Get Cocky About It, Okay.
"Never mind," sighed Metatron. "We'll give it another go next December, all right? Just please read the blessed Manual by then. It's not like it's hard to get a copy."
Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin is a decentralised computer currency designed by self-righteous Ayn Rand-reading nerds who despise looters and parasites like, er, you. It is used to purchase Internet services, illegal drugs and pictures of naked women holding video cards.
Bitcoin works by an emergent synergy of cryptography, peer-to-peer, anonymity, anarchism, libertarianism, wasting stupendous quantities of electricity, the marketing department at NVidia, the enduring exchange value of tulip bulbs and doing all of this instead of Folding@Home.
Bitcoin successfully harnesses a hitherto-unexploited Internet resource: the vast reserves of unexamined privilege amongst computer programmers. Coins are "mined" by stealing them from people who are able to comprehend this level of computer science but still keep their Bitcoin wallet in plain text on a Windows machine.
The Bitcoin system is robustly designed to continue past the collapse of the US dollar and the world economy, as the Internet, fast computers and reliable electricity are all expected to be readily available when barbarian hordes are wandering the burnt-out post-apocalyptic remnants of civilisation.
It is completely incorrect to describe Bitcoin as a "pyramid scheme." Technically, it's a "pump-and-dump."
Many common products are still inexplicably not purchasable with Bitcoins. "It's as if they don't understand the revolutionary wonder of Bitcoin," says Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "I can't get chicks with Bitcoins either. Even with my slickest Pick-Up Artist techniques! It's as if my knowledge of economics and game theory didn't apply to real life. But that's impossible, of course. They're probably just theists. Hold on, I just gotta post to Slashdot about this."
Bitcoin was invented by Internet libertarians, in the spirit of freely-chosen individual interpersonal interactions that will bring about the utter collapse of the oppressive taint of the dead hand of government, in order to make money at your expense.
Microsoft remains on the bleeding edge of innovation with its completely new-from-the-ground-up Windows Bing Voice Internet phone platform, formerly known as Skype.
Windows Bing Voice was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. "Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality," said Steve Ballmer. "Heck, even they didn't know it was Skype until today. That's how, uh, stealth we are."
The new Windows Bing Voice client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We'll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice 2011 Ultimate Edition by 2013, for sure."
Service is expected to remain "at 100%" as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows updates and Windows Genuine Advantage serial number blacklists.
Google said that the Google Voice servers were "holding up well" under the influx of new users.
A lot of TFA came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) .
XFree86 died when the community got up and left. Even with free hosting, the remaining XFree86 partisans couldn't keep it alive and lost interest.
Before that, the X Consortium - backed by the might of industry - died when no-one could be found to participate in it ... because XFree86 was where the action (i.e., community) was.
Citizendium forked from Wikipedia, recruited a pile of academics, then Larry Sanger drove them away. (And then the cranks moved in.) When someone said "chaps, CZ is dead" and tried another fork, they called him ... a "traitor". This from the project that was a fork itself.
XOrg is under the MIT X11 licence, but seems to get plenty of contributions back - because it's where the community is. An open source licence with centripetal force from the gravitational pull of the community.
Wayland's lead developers and all the people pushing for it in Fedora are X.Org developers. They're not "traitors" to X, they're people with their eye on the target: a good open source desktop.
EGCS won by the community getting up and leaving GCC.
LibreOffice won when the community got up and left Oracle. Oracle and IBM's approach in trying to claw it back is gibberingly, hilariously misconceived. (And Rob Weir blew his cred irretrievably lying about what the FSF had said and directing abuse at the FSF rep who tried to correct his lie. Once a shill equals a shill.)
OOo=XFree86 with a sponsor. Yay sponsors. Can IBM employ enough contributors to single-handedly make up for the enthusiasm to be found at LibreOffice? I really doubt it.
LibreOffice is already ridiculously better than OOo on Windows and (IMO) feels nicer on Linux. Not as smooth a user experience as MS Office, but it's clear there's now someone involved who actually gives a hoot about Windows users' experience. (And I'm amazed that, from the observable evidence, OOo clearly didn't.)
Research in Motion have broken new barriers with the PlayBook tablet, a BlackBerry that can’t read email. And needs to be tethered to a phone.
“We feel a technology preview is just the thing we need to fight iPhone and Android in the consumer market,” said founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “The missing core functionality should be seen as areas of spectacular potential. Also, the board has ascertained that you should stay away from the brown acid, it’s not so good.”
The PlayBook has launched remarkably, with thousands of the devices being recalled for crippling operating system bugs straight after release.
In a double-tap Osborne through the head, the PlayBook uses the new QNX BlackBerry OS, which does not run current BlackBerry apps, will not be available on phones for another year and will not work on any current BlackBerry device. This is separate from OS 7, to be released soon, which will also not work on any existing BlackBerry. RIM’s present mobile carrier partners were “overwhelmed” to be stuck with so much already-obsolete stock.
RIM led the world into the smartphone era, several years before Apple’s iPhone turned everyone into the sort of twat you only ever used to see carrying a BlackBerry.
Technology industry rumours suggest a Microsoft takeover of RIM, considered an excellent match in competence and vision. “Synergy’s just another word for two and two makes one!” said Steve Ballmer. “We will assimilate your technological stench of death into our own.”
Already done. Books LLC and Alphascript do these print-on-demand "books" taken from Wikipedia, charging $50 a copy. Reusing WIkipedia content is fine - that's what it's there for, make a zillion bucks, knock yourself out - but they need to make it a little clearer where this stuff comes from.
THE OSBOURNES, Bog Society, Sunday (NTN) — A survey by fraud investigators has revealed the top ten worst excuses used by the evil benefit cheats depriving you, yes you, of valuable pennies you could have put toward your next pint.
"Benefit fraud is no joke," said welfare reform minister Lord Fraud, "and yet our investigators are routinely dealing with barefaced cheek and ridiculous excuses for stealing money from the taxpayer.
"Fortunately, they're mates of George's, so we can get on with scapegoating victims we're fairly sure probably can't fight back. You weren't limping on the way in here, were you?"
Never mind the six billion quid HMRC let Vodafone off for free. You can now measure cuts to services in percentages of a Vodafone.
Or George Osborne's personal tax evasion.
No, it's all the eBay traders. Yes, they must be the problem.
Neuroscientists have found that religious fervour lights up the same parts of the brain as waiting in line for your devotions at the Apple Store.
The scientists were interviewed by a BBC programme exploring the fantastically lucrative and popular brands springing up around the supernatural. Religions such as “Christianity” parody the story of the semi-mythical Steve Jobs’ virgin birth, adoption by a humble Silicon Valley family, founding of Apple, expulsion from the fold, decade in the wilderness and triumphant Second Coming, in which devotees were led to enlightenment, glory and hipness.
“We suspect religions may be memetic parasites latching onto the areas of the brain evolved to appreciate Apple products,” said one scientist whose name is being withheld for protection from outraged Apple jihadis. “The scans of ‘religion’ appear remarkably similar — the adrenal glands are stimulated and the same areas of the visual regions light up. Somewhat in the shape of an apple. No, really! Apple-shaped brain stigmata! I’ve contacted Cupertino with news of a miracle, and put the scans up on eBay.”
Cupertino’s response was frosty. “To have the sacred enlightenment of the products of our saviour Steve maligned by comparison to mere witchdoctor cultist mumbo-jumbo is no less than a calculated insult. One important difference is that our stuff works. If you hold it right.” The spokesman then compared the neuroscientist’s mother to a PC.
“The comparison is ridiculous,” said “religious” leader Joe “Happy Heil” Ratzinger. “We’re just out to make an honest buck like anyone. Well, fairly honest.”
You know how all us freetards keep harping on about software freedom and why it's actually important and stuff?
This is why.
How about actually being a parent? Sitting down with your child and help them use the Internet safely is far better than trying to either force the usage of filtering applications or ranting about why the content is there to begin with.
+1
This is highly achievable. My daughter is 4, has a computer (an ancient Mac G4 with an ancient Cinema Display with the weird Mac-only plug - discards from a publishing company, depreciated to £0) - she watches BBC CBeebies on it and plays kids' Flash games. She does this in the sitting room, where we know what she's doing.
(And the kids' Flash games usually start with an advertisement - directed at parents. This is monetisable.)
Things like this would exist if there was actually any market whatsoever for them.
The trouble is: those demanding them are not prepared to do the work themselves; instead, they demand that others restrict the services they offer.
Wikipedia got this for years and eventually told the people demanding it to go away and do it themselves if they wanted it. Notice how the people wanting this don't go to the trouble of setting up a filtering service themselves - no, they demand it be filtered at the source. They do this consistently.
I've spent the past five or so years being delighted at how much better Ubuntu has consistently done than XP doing the same jobs (Firefox with a zillion tabs/windows open, and a music player) on the same hardware. This is most disconcerting.
Yeah, I'm seeing this. Running 11.04 with classic interface on a Dell Mini 9. I thought the battery was finally dying of old age - no, it's terrible power consumption.
Is there anything that can be done about this? Old kernel version?
The Internet Watch Foundation’s “Crapland” child-friendly Internet theme park has gone bust after only three days.
An information board at the entrance depicts the classical painting Smell The Glove by Scorpionaggio (courtesy National Portrait Gallery) and welcomes the visitor on a “flight of the imagination, travelling down the magical pathways that teenagers have used to get their porn for centuries,” and which have been specially opened up for the lucky children invited to come. “Just like Michael Jackson’s Neverland.”
Advertisements promised a “Clean Kiddie-Friendly World Hollywood Special FXs, Blind Faith plane ride, Nevermind swimming baths, Houses of the Holy rock climbing & much more!”
The reality when it opened on Saturday evening was somewhat less impressive. Spurious 404s, lying customer service staff (“for the authentic Internet experience!”), HTML 2.0 and web searches through AltaVista. “It looked like a website from 1995 or a paper chart of what it should look like,” said customer Jimmy Wales. “It was like they’d stacked dial-up modems on both sides of a path together, stuck some printouts on a TV and stuck a keyboard in front. We were waiting two hours and they charged us £10 for a photo with Mary Whitehouse.”
Two curtain-twitchers and a Whitehouse were attacked by irate Internet users. A posting on 4chan showed a busybody having a fag behind the grotto.
Then, on Tuesday evening, Crapland closed. A statement by the management said this was due to “intentional organised crowd manipulation and event sabotage and unscrupulous and inaccurate negative bias media that quoted our words accurately in full.” A woman dressed as a particularly hefty Pepperpot stood outside shrieking: “The IWF’s dead. Go home.”
Cable internet users who unwittingly signed up for the Crapland experience are giving up and getting DSL broadband instead. “It’s been a complete Virgin killer.”
Silverlight was Microsoft's answer to Flash
Silverlight was Microsoft's second answer to Flash. Their first answer was Liquid Motion, back in the '90s, when Flash was only for silly animations.
Others include its XPS replacement for Adobe PDF and its HD Photo replacement for JPEG photographs. Also, that CD-ROM format Vista defaults to which no other computers can read.
I used to really like Ubuntu Netbook Remix around 9.10. I'm actually amazed Unity on 11.04 sucks as much as it does, and wonder where it all went horribly wrong.
HEY HEY 16K, R: Tape Loading Error, Thursday (NTK) — GCHQ has begun work on a range of uniquely British cyber-weapons to add to Britain's defensive capability.
"Cyber-Space," said General Jonathan Shaw, pronouncing the hyphen between the words, "represents conflict without borders. But we can use the finest of British technical pluck to fight off Johnny Cyberforeigner!"
"We need a toolbox of capabilities," said armed forces minister Nick Harvey."For instance, we have a truckload of old Psion EPOCs, which are excellent for hand-to-hand combat. We can also demoralise the enemy with talk of what a fantastic OS it has and how their Nokia with Symbian just can't compare. Then, of course, we drive a truck over them."
Other research weapons include Sinclair ZX81 ninja stars, BBC Model B boat anchors and more ethically questionable devices such as Amstrad Emailer land mines.
Harvey did not specify where future threats might come from. "It would be foolish to assume the West can always dictate the pace and direction of this cyber-techno-electrickery-logy-stuff. Thing. I understand there are clever people in the world who don't even live in Britain. Imagine that!
The cyber-warfare initiative is anticipated to fully achieve its objectives over the next five years, those being a suitably fattened defence budget and continuing contract bungs to BAE Systems.
I was interested to see that the Engadget story is filled with pretty much the same complaints about this new Windows interface that the Linux world is making about GNOME 3 and Ubuntu Unity - that is, people (e.g. me, I'll note) are annoyed at the prospect of the desktop as they know it being made into a big phone.
US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, has said that attacks on the United States via the Internet could merit a conventional military response.
“I don’t think you take anything off the table. We’re particularly looking toward one group in Seattle.”
The Seattle-based insurgent group is thought to have seeded American government and military computers with millions of copies of malware that allows attackers easy access to any data stored on the computer, or indeed to take complete control of the computer and use it for their own ends as part of a massive “botnet” to mount further attacks. The malware, “Windows,” makes securing a computer running it almost impossible.
“Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action,” emphasised Chilton, “and not in any way out of twenty-five years’ bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery.”
Chilton stressed that members of the US military must begin to think of their computers as the front lines. “Do you realize that in addition to adding Windows to computers, why, there are studies underway to Windowsize salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream! I can no longer sit back and allow Windows infiltration, Windows indoctrination, Windows subversion and the international enterprise licensing conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!”
The Obama administration is currently reviewing the United State’s cyberspace defense policy. “We’re considering all options thoroughly,” said the President, closing his MacBook and looking lingeringly at the red button on his desk.
>Wayland is a rallying point for X developers and is an attempt to specifically dump X.
Fixed that for you. Everyone working on Wayland is an X.org dev. They know what they're trying to kill off.
Oh, and Wayland will also have an X server.
The GFDL is possibly one of the worst licenses ever. The only reason it has not been justifiably buried at the bottom of a swamp with "MISERABLE FAILURE" burnt into its forehead with a soldering iron is because Wikipedia used to use it. Wikipedia used it because Nupedia used it. Nupedia used it only because the CC licenses hadn't been invented yet.
Literally no one understands how to reuse GFDL content safely, including the FSF. I sent a query about how it applies to aggregates; three months later, the FSF cut'n'pasted their "we have no idea either" response, suggesting you read the license text and consult your attorney. Given Wikimedia's attorney at the time was Mike Godwin and it made his head hurt too, this strongly suggests no-one left at the FSF wants to think about this thing. (They finally clarified this particular issue in GFDL 1.3.)
In the context of mirroring a widely-edited wiki or a page thereof, its terms are difficult to follow, legally unclear and may be technically impossible to comply with in a comparable degree of safety to the GPL or CC by-sa. (Every copy must have the full 23 kilobytes of licence text attached, about seven pages of single-spaced 12 point. This is not so good for single articles or photographs, and Internet video is likely impossible to reproduce under the GFDL in legal safety. This is, of course, the easiest term of the GFDL to obey. CC by-sa allows the license to be named by reference.) And don't even ask about images.
Before Wikimedia went Creative Commons, tedious nerds would frequently claim that any given reuser of Wikipedia content was technically violating the GFDL no matter what shrubberies they obtained (thus putting off quite a lot of reusers). The Debian project classes it as a "non-free" license because its terms are unclear and onerous in practice.
Use CC by-sa, CC-by or Public Domain, like everyone else in the whole goddamn free content world does. Don't use GFDL for the same reason you don't use shitty home-rolled software licenses that may be technically free/open but are deliberately incompatible with everything.
Second prize, two 360s! The new 360 logo.
DOOM, Spawn Camping, Saturday (The Word) — The Lord God, the Creator of the Universe, offered His commiserations to every soul in His Creation that they had failed to reach the standard of faith required for Rapturing today.
Thousands of dedicated Christians were not uplifted bodily to Heaven, in a wave of Rapture circling the globe at six o'clock in the evening local time.
"The manual is extremely clear on these points," He said through his Voice, Metatron ("I keep telling you, I'm an angel, not a Transformer"). "You mix fibres, you eat shellfish, you defecate closer than a mile from the city, you sit on a chair that your wife has ever sat on when she was on her period. And you have completely ignored the detailed instructions in the first chapter of Leviticus on how the Lord likes his barbecue." It shook Its head in exasperation. "You've had the book right there, for years!"
Atheists, originally revelling in snide and superior schadenfreude, were more than a little chagrined by the actual Voice of God quite unambiguously revealing its existence and telling the world what it had got wrong by direct communication into the soul of every human on Earth. Millions have now signed up for the Church of Reluctantly Admitting, All Right, I Have the Verifiable Proof I was Asking For, Just Don't Get Cocky About It, Okay.
"Never mind," sighed Metatron. "We'll give it another go next December, all right? Just please read the blessed Manual by then. It's not like it's hard to get a copy."